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Every time I try to watch an On Demand HD movie I get a message saying my download speed isn't fast enough to stream and do I want to just download the movie for later viewing. How much bandwidth do you need to stream? I can download a movie by bit torrent in less time than it takes to download an On Demand movie. How many people even have 21 Mbps? If that ain't enough, then very few people can watch streaming On Demand.

I don't know if Directv is having issues of late but over the weekend we tried to watch Zero Dark Thirty. The plan was to download it and begin watching shortly thereafter. The download was unbelievably slow, only getting to 1% after about 5-10 minutes.

I cancelled the download/purchase and instead streamed via AppleTV with no issues.

I should add, that it wasn't a bandwidth issue on my end as the same time I was streaming the movie via AppleTV, my daughter was also streaming a movie via Vudu. I did not start her movie until after I cancelled the Directv purchase.

I have 35 Mb/s down and up and I can rarely "Watch Now". 95% of the time I need to download the show before I can watch it. I don't know who hosts their servers, but it would work a lot better if they contracted out this part of the business to professionals. DirecTV needs to focus on their core competencies and delivering video on demand isn't one of them.

ok, so it's common, then. I'm finding myself using less and less of these extra "features" and just watching live tv. If I want to watch a movie I'll just bit torrent a bluray copy and put it on a flash drive. Higher quality and a faster download. Thanks.

ok, so it's common, then. I'm finding myself using less and less of these extra "features" and just watching live tv. If I want to watch a movie I'll just bit torrent a bluray copy and put it on a flash drive. Higher quality and a faster download. Thanks.

...and illegal.

If you stop responding to them or put them on ignore, then eventually they'll go away.

This is enough for "most" users to watch HD "now", but not every show has a bit-rate that averages 7-9 Mb/s.

Last week I found a concert off of the audience channel that wouldn't let me "watch now", so I downloaded it and then checked its bit-rate, It averaged 14-17+ Mb/s. This matched the time it took to download at 7 Mb/s.

2. Make absolutely certain that your units of measure are correctly represented. Mbps (megabits per second) is not the same as MBps (megabytes per second).

Most of the satellite downlinked HD content runs at around 5-16Mbps but it is rarely sustained at the highest rates.

The most important aspect of your experience is going to be related to the consistency of your Internet connection, not the maximum speed. Having to adjust the bitrate on the server frequently is going to result in a poor experience.

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -- JFK

I have 12/1 mbps. It's a DOCSIS 3 modem. On May 1st they are upgrading this speed tier to 20/2. To get faster speeds I would have to bundle Cable TV and I would automatically have 30/3. Or pay an extra $50 a month to get 50/5 - no thanks.

Most of the time Watch Now works pretty good. Maybe once or twice I did have to pause it for a minute or two to allow it to catch up. Watch Now is great and reminds me back in the day when I had Comcast and used their VOD.

The only thing is when you are done watching a video it doesn't take you back to menu you were at. Your spit out at the DVR playlist, and even though you didn't download the movie, its in your playlist with the keep forever tag. When watching numerous music videos from Fuse on demand, its annoying to say the least.

Anyway DirecTV needs to just beef up the CDN. I think they partner with Limelight networks. Maybe add more peering around the country and beef up those links. The distributed nature of a professional content delivery network is how the big players like Netflix, Vudu, Amazon, YouTube, Vimeo, Vevo, Revision 3, and many many many more internet video streaming works. Prior to "watch now" speeds peaked at about 5 mbps which to me indicated that DirecTV was still using the old single server download model. Hopefully its now on a mesh topology CDN with regional cache PoP's.

Now if only they could allow me to access the VOD screens and stream off my H24. That would be SLICK!

Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?

If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..

Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?

If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..

Justify stealing however you wish, it's still stealing and illegal. The USB plugs aren't for illegal copies, they're for extra storage and playing copies you made of your library...not illegal torrents. Do you work for free?

If you stop responding to them or put them on ignore, then eventually they'll go away.

Yeah, ok, fellow Yankee fan. Is it illegal for the music industry to charge me for 3 vinyl albums, a cassette, and a CD of the same albums because the technology changes or the vinyl wears out or the tape snaps or the CD glue comes unstuck?

If I've purchased an album 5 times I don't feel any guilt in downloading the songs for free in mp3 form. And I don't feel guilty about dl'ing a movie which in almost every case sucks these days, which also explains why I only do about 2 or 3 movies a year at most and sleep through most of them. And if they don't want me to even do that, then tell Blu Ray player manufacturers not to include USB ports on their players and TV's that are put there for the express purpose of being to play video from a source other than a BluRay disc..

I only can get 6.0 DSL from AT&T and it is a very consistent 5.7 mps. Netflix says the minimum for HD is 5.0 and it works quite well. I have only watched three or four on Demands, from D*, and each one streamed very well with no buffering at all.

2. Make absolutely certain that your units of measure are correctly represented. Mbps (megabits per second) is not the same as MBps (megabytes per second).

Most of the satellite downlinked HD content runs at around 5-16Mbps but it is rarely sustained at the highest rates.

The most important aspect of your experience is going to be related to the consistency of your Internet connection, not the maximum speed. Having to adjust the bitrate on the server frequently is going to result in a poor experience.

These are very good points, but in my case the 35 Mb/s (not MB/s) is not any kind of burst speed. I have no idea about the consistency or latency of my connection to the server, but I know the experience is so bad that I don't even use DirecTV On Demand.

I stream the highest bitrates offered from Netflix and several podcast networks and never have this issue.